7 117 Discussion Our six-steps process, described in Chapter 2, can be used to validate cases for IPE, and make sure that they are of an appropriate level for the students involved. This process ensures educators of good educational material that can be used repeatedly in the following years. In further research, these steps could be tested. Validation in other educational facilities, under different circumstances and in different specialisms can provide insights and adjustments to the six steps which are developed in this thesis. Also in study 1, described in Chapter 2, we were unable to validate the assessment format. The lack of a validated assessment format hindered the judgement of the health care plans. ‘Which plans were actually better than others and why?‘. ‘Which plans would implicate better patient care?‘, would be questions for further research. Because the translation from educational setting to clinical practice needs to be bridged, it is important to get consensus on how these student products are assessed by clinicians. Further research should focus on validating an assessment tool for these student products in educational setting, and investigating the relationship between student health care plans and actions for real patients in clinical practice. More insights into this area may facilitate the extrapolation of student products to outcomes in clinical practice. In our research, students perceived a positive change in patient care after IPE. More research needs to be done to check if this perceived change results in better care for patients. Specific outcomes, e.g., patient satisfaction or time to discharge, could be measured on patients that received care from students that followed IPE sessions in classroom setting, compared to students that followed the usual (uniprofessional) education. We found that nursing students are more motivated to work with older adults than medical students. To overcome the shortage of medical students interested in the field of geriatrics, it is interesting to know why nursing students are more interested in this group of patients. Was this interest already present or was it stimulated by the curriculum? If the interest was already present, some elements of the nursing curriculum could be transferred to medical curricula, so medical students get enthusiastic about this patient group. It could be that the nursing curriculum is more focused on ‘care’ and the medical curriculum more on ‘cure’. This may be influencing the motivation to work with older adults. Nursing students also seem more motivated to collaborate interprofessionally than medical students. This has been described earlier in literature, with comparison between nurses and physicians. Insights into these factors may help to motivate all professionals, undergraduate and in continuous professional development, to work interprofessionally. At last, our research showed an improvement in perceived interprofessional collaboration skills in students that received IPE. This was measured using the ICCAS,
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